Or You May Drown (But I Didn't)
by KissTheBoy7
Summary: The bathroom still makes him skittish, but he's a big boy; he rummages in the medicine cabinet until he finds it. Roger is drowning, April is watching, and he has to save himself this time. Mark/Roger if you squint. Self-harm, depression and recovery. Oneshot.


Roger was rarely nervous before the virus took a hold of him but now he always is, every second of the day. When the weight of April isn't crushing down on his chest, and when he actually feels well enough to get up, take a shower, putter around for a bit, he watches his hands shake in dismay.

There's no going back to how things were, not for him.

Mark, well, Mark is just Mark and he's got his film to make. When Roger is relatively sane again he practically shoves his roommate out the door. He's been cooped up in here with his brooding for too long, and Roger refuses to drag him down with him.

So Mark is out filming pigeons and homeless people and support groups he really has no right being a part of if he's not going to speak. (which Roger knows perfectly well that he isn't, which is sad, really, because he knows Mark is having a hard enough time coping with what he finds every night when he returns - he can see it in his eyes when he reminds him, every day at the same time - "take your AZT", but what he means is "don't leave me") And Roger is alone.

At first it's disconcerting, alone for the first time in months - _allowed _to be alone, trusted not to run out and pawn anything off for a few hours of blissful drifting and a track mark to add to the collection. And then he starts to enjoy it. And then… then he's lonely.

He doesn't expect to be lonely. He's wanted this, wanted it so desperately sometimes that he screamed and punched and kicked and had to be held down. He just wanted to be alone but now he wants Mark to come back and rescue him from the redheaded girl in the shadows, haunting the edges of his vision.

The nightmares have faded almost entirely, though. He wonders what it's like to be April. What it was like, anyways. They'd had a good life together, if not a little fucked up. Bands and drugs and clubs and groupies, but that's only the half of it; there was a tenderness to their relationship, a passion that he used to write pages and pages about, score after score, grinning at her from the stage because she always knew he was singing about her. The wicked smiles and needles shared between them meant so little, when he thought of her - just her, nothing else, just his April and the sad way she smiled as they whispered goodnight.

He wonders what it's like to draw a razor across your wrist, to paint with your own blood. To bathe in it. The bathroom still makes him skittish, but he's a big boy, and he wonders, and one day when Mark's out filming those stupid birds because he told him to, and Mark's a sucker, he slips in and rummages in the medicine cabinet until he finds it.

Fresh razor blades, unused. Probably bought on clearance. They're cheap but they're sharp enough and he tests one on his thumb, gnawing almost through his lip.

This is so fucking ridiculous. He's diseased, he shouldn't be taking a risk like this. But Mark isn't home and he's lonely, and he just wants to _understand _what it was that April was feeling that made her so desperate to drown in the rose-tinted water.

It wasn't just the disease, he knows that. Hindsight is a bitch - all he can see, nowadays, is that sad, sad smile and the look in her eyes that mirrored the one staring blankly up at him from the bathtub. Lifeless and empty. April, so full of life, drained in every way imaginable. The April that trails behind him, hiding in the corners and the shadows, never laughs like real April did. This April is eternally smiling that sad smile and Roger can't stand it anymore.

He just has to know. Mark won't have to see, Mark won't have to know at all - he knows how to clean up after himself.

The blade stings across his wrist in one frantic swipe and he watches, almost panicked, as the blood begins dripping (too-fast) down his wrist.

No. Nonono. Eyes wide, breathing shallowly, Roger stares as it rolls into the crease of his elbow and drips, drips, drips, splattering little droplets onto the pink-stained floor. Joining April in death, who was probably watching him right now from the dimness of the hallway, frowning.

She had always shared everything with him. Everything but this. He can't help but think that she'd been trying to protect him.

Well, damn it, he doesn't _need _protecting! He wants to know - he _needs _to know, or he's going to go crazy, he's going to-

He's going to throw up if he watches any longer. The blade clatters into the sink and he snatches it back up, swallowing dry as he tentatively brings it to his other wrist. His hands are shaking, almost too badly - this cut is sloppier, not as deep, and oozes like lava taunting him.

He's a chickenshit. He can't do what she did. Whatever she was feeling, he'll never know now.

Cleanup is a hasty but thorough process. The razor is disposed of, first soaked in bleach. The blood on the floor is scrubbed at so furiously that Roger feels tears on his face afterwards, and he doesn't remember putting them there.

Mark never asks about the scars on his wrists, not even when it's summer and boiling and they're lounging around half-naked on the couch together. Roger is glad. He catches him looking, once or twice, but then they're kissing lazily and he pulls the filmmaker into his lap and April turns her face away.

She doesn't watch him anymore.


End file.
